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Investigating Amazon’s Impact on Retail Sales Growth

The latest retail sales report from the Census Department offers a fascinating look at Amazon’s impact on retailers if you dive into the details.

Retail sales are off to a poor start in the second quarter. April plus May growth is only up 1% in total, about 0.6% annualized.

Areas highlighted in yellow with blue boxes show retail categories where Amazon has had a heavy impact. Sales from March through May of 2017 are up 4.4% vs. the same period a year ago but electronics, sporting goods, department stores excluding leased departments have been clobbered.

Amazon has little to no impact on food and drinking establishments, food and beverage stores, and gas stations.

The North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) describes Nonstore Retailers as follows:

Industries in the Nonstore Retailers subsector retail merchandise using methods, such as the broadcasting of infomercials, the broadcasting and publishing of direct-response advertising, the publishing of paper and electronic catalogs, door-to-door solicitation, in-home demonstration, selling from portable stalls and distribution through vending machines. Establishments in this subsector include mail-order houses, vending machine operators, home delivery sales, door-to-door sales, party plan sales, electronic shopping, and sales through portable stalls (e.g., street vendors, except food). Establishments engaged in the direct sale (i.e., nonstore) of products, such as home heating oil dealers and newspaper delivery service providers are included in this subsector.

Amazon accounts for an amazing 43% of online sales. It would be interesting to know Amazon’s percentage of Nonstore Retailer sales.

Competition

With Amazon’s purchase of Whole Foods, Amazon is now entering the food and beverage business directly.

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“It is the crony capitalist entity that the left is fighting against.”

…….that the left pliantly and dutifully, like once-amusing-now-just-boring windup dolls, are “fighting against,” entirely by championing the growth and strengthening of every single institution, that enshrines that establishment’s status…….

It’s so stupid, I wouldn’t personally buy a dishrag dumb enough to fall for the pap. Which no doubt makes me too discriminating a dishrag consumer. Hence someone who “we” should sue for discrimination…. While cheering on, and enriching, the ambulance chasers engaged in such useful “work”……. That’s about the level of the current left.

Bakunin and Zapata where useful voices on the left. The current gaggle of indoctrinated establishment apologists, are hardly useful even for target practice, much less anything else.

Most retailers despise Amazon and unless you are a distributor or manufacturer, you can’t make any money on Amazon due to the 15% fees. Try shipping Prime and your fees can exceed 25%. Those distributor that sell to Amazon are destroying their retail customer base.
Kroger ought to join forces with other big grocers and show them real competition.

As far as most of us know, the only entity that meaningfully contributes to Amazon’s bottom line is AWS. And AWS is only profitable because they are in effect a subprime financier to largely unprofitable tech startups that still have VC money to burn and are looking for what effectively amounts to off-balance-sheet financing of their computing and networking hardware.

Once the VC money dries up, AWS is likely to have serious issues, and the rest of Amazon probably isn’t sustainable on its own.

AWS = Amazon Web Services, a company that basically rents use of their computers primarily to tech startups who do not want to invest their own capital in servers and infrastructure. Effectively AWS becomes an off-balance-sheet financier of tech startups.

VCs = Venture Capitalists. The people who pump money into Internet startups, often willing to lose vast amounts of money in the hope that they will be able to pump a business up enough to dump it to the general public. Most Internet startups these days are not profitable.

I’m going to second what kidhorn said. If I had to guess tech start ups represent only a small portion of their overall user base. The biggest benefactors are those small to medium size businesses where it doesn’t make sense to host your own cloud, but even big companies often find it easier to kick off a new project on something like AWS vs trying to do it in house.

Ah, so the point of Prime has something to do with downloading music or movies or something? I guess a lot of people do that, but, never having been remotely interested in that technology, I had no idea it was that many. Thanks. That answers my question.

Here is a recommended read from me for everyone. You can download the pdf with a simple registration, or just online. It covers the evolution of ID in its various settings, and is as relevant to any other country for the themes it brings up. I have only read the first chapter but expect the rest is as detailed. I don’t take any text as automatically unbiased, same applies to this one, own judgement.

I wouldn’t be getting into car sales either with autonomous cars looming. Most people will be just fine hitting a button on an app to summon a car from their favorite corporation who actually produces or owns the car. They won’t feel a need to buy their own car any more than they do a horse.

Autonomous cars will cost at least a million a piece, require trillions of infrastructure upgrades, and have expensive maintenance and ongoing support costs. Wouldn’t worry too much about them for quite a long time.

Even without Amazon, the retail outlook sucks. None of this wave of retail bankruptcies and store closings is rocket science mathematics. Customers, even at Dollar stores, have much less spending power as increasing housing costs (rents), debt payments, and Obamacare mandates are bleeding away spending power. Spending has been redistributed away from retail, with Obamacare the last straw breaking the consumer’s back and deep-sixing retail.

Government promises of $15 and $20 minimum hourly living wages make retail bankruptcies and store closures inevitable. In California, Amazon’s crony capitalist deals with the state’s corrupt Democrat politicians give Amazon a 10% advantage over other retailers. In exchange for setting up warehouses (job creation) in two bankrupt cities, Amazon can collect and keep all California sales tax revenues that it collects; which will likely include its new Whole Foods acquisition. Trying competing against Amazon with that 10% handicap if you are a low-margin retailer disgorging 10% of revenues to the state as sales tax. Amazon thrives on crony capitalism, much like Tesla, and with Bezos controlling the Washington Post, a Deep State propaganda conduit favoring Democrats, they are well-positioned to call in favors. Words like “corrupt” and “racket” come to mind.

In California, ASAP, especially if they get to keep that 10% sales tax they collect via their crony capitalist deal-making. Amazon can have the highest margins and lowest prices in California. But I expect they need to digest Whole Foods before buying car dealerships. Today Amazon, Tomorrow the World. Though with cars, warranty service is a big factor.

We’ll see how Amazon Prime fares losing money if the Amazon stock price falls deeply back into line with a realistic P/E ratio. Like 1999 a number of tech companies are floating along selling stock when needed to raise capital.

Just for your info. I have been over a year an excellent Amazon customer.
But people in Eutope start to switch to other Amazon competitors because Amazon prices are starting to… increase.
No longer much of bargains when you compare with China’s.
All what is non food can be sold from the distance and as cheap as labor costs may be low. And Prime shipping is not convincing if you get anyway free shipping with just the enough price you need to attain (25€ in France).
I would start selling the share IMHO. You are warned.

Whole Foods sells overpriced designer gourmet carrots to dim-witted yuppies for $50/lb. They are not in the same market as Publix or Kroger or Costco or Walmart or any store that sells to the 99.9%.

Is Amazon going to order Whole Foods to dump their current clientelle — and refocus on price sensitive customers? Essentially that would mean starting over from scratch, begging the question why Amazon just spent $14 billion on less than $1 billion of real estate.

All the media hype on artificial intelligence is just naive. All the grocery chains are doing that already. They already offer self checkout and curbside pickup. Amazon isn’t offering anything new, no matter what ridiculous shrieking Jim Cramer does.

Mish asked if existing grocery chains would expand given the “new entrant” — which ignores the fact that Whole Foods doesn’t serve 99% of the population (its products are overpriced), and it ignores that Amazon still has months of due diligence before it can start months of restructuring.

The other grocers can’t afford to take their eye off the real competition (each other), and they can’t afford to ignore real potential entrants like Aldi or Tesco.

Amazon is not economically viable — it loses money on its online store (AWS is the only profit center they have). We have all heard this song before, the dot-coms don’t need profits or even a business model, because they have dot-com in their names.

The hysteria around Amazon is absurd. It doesn’t make a profit, and relies on constantly pumping up their stock price to stay in business (losing money all the while).

The 99.9% of the population that doesn’t piss money into the wind on their groceries is not going to shop at Whole Foods (that is a truism, we already don’t shop there). And if Whole Foods gets completely restructured like a true grocer, then it has distinct disadvantages against established companies.

Aldi represents a potential threat — and I don’t know that European style grocers are going to be accepted in US culture (neither is good or bad, they are just different).

Amazon is not economically viable, it doesn’t make a profit — and wasting $14 billion on $1 billion in real estate doesn’t make the store chain economically viable.

Whole Foods doesn’t sell to the 99% of the population that looks at the price tag — they would have to abandon their existing customer base to become relevant to most of the country.

Amazon is not economically viable — it doesn’t make a profit on its online sales. Its a dot-com with no profits and barely a business model. They just spent $14 billion buying $1 billion of real estate (maybe less), and the artificial intelligence stuff is just hype (every store and every casino already does the same things). Self checkout registers are nothing new.

Hopefully grocers won’t get distracted by the stock market’s latest shiny object, which is all Amazon is.

It would be interesting to know how many of the Prime subscribers are on the monthly plan, the student plan, or are given free or deeply discounted memberships. Also, by lowering the free shipping threshold, wouldn’t it discourage Prime signup?

Apparently everyone commenting on the Amazon phenomenon must be short the stock. High P/E, no profits in core business, crony capitalism, etc. Historically, shorting Amazon has been a great way to learn the lesson of “the market can remain irrational longer than you can stay solvent”.

We are arguing about the value of a business that does not make money and never has. It does not offer the best prices on many goods, and it relies on shipping subsidies (from the US Post Office, a taxpayer funded GSE), and historically Amazon didn’t even pay sales tax. It still doesn’t pay its workers much.

The stock price can go up, as long as Wall Street pumps it. The business model, on the other hand, is not viable

If you think you are better at determining value then the market – you should start a hedge fund. Once upon a time I used to say, “either step up or shut up” – not like I ever respected someones opinion just for having on a position, but at least I respect them for standing materially behind their convictions.

Market capitalization is absolutely the single best indicator of a company’s value at any given time, as determined by the sum analysis of typically thousands of shareholders. “Tulips” were only a commodity, the supply and demand of which could influence the valuation of a Tulip company via shareholder analysis, much like big oil today. As for Amazon, if they’re negotiating great tax deals and buying highly profitable companies for cash that also add enormous distribution center capacity in key markets…the abacus indicates a valuation plus.

‘
“The stock price is not the same as the value of the business.”
Technically it is. The other is just one persons opinion of what it should be.
‘

If my business got a government protected charter to rob everyone else in the country for half their income every year; or simply had a deal whereby the Fed did it for me by printing up enough freshprint and handing it to me, I have no doubt my stock price would be nice and high for awhile. But value?????? In a world where debating what the meaning of is is, I guess the meaning of value can be many things as well….

Reuters — The merger that shook food and retail stocks on Friday – Amazon.com Inc’s proposed deal to buy Whole Foods Market Inc – rattled some employees of the upscale grocery chain who expressed fears ranging from layoffs to the loss of their laid-back corporate culture.

Carmen Clark, 37, a six-year employee at a store in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina, said some workers worry that Amazon-led automation could lead to job cuts. “Everybody’s been kind of joking that it’s going to be robots and drones,” Clark said of potential changes from Amazon, which uses robots in its warehouses and is testing drones for delivery.

ROFLMAO… I’m a lil’ slow (As you correctly pointed out). I am not certain if that is a message for me or if you are informing me of something you stick up your ass when you are having one of your lil’ sessions. (Index would seem more logical to a simpleton but it doesn’t surprise me that a genius like you would innovate and realize the size benefit of the middle)

Sheesh.. you have such thin skin for someone who is always so quick to insult.

Illinois Core priority payments total about $1.85 billion each month, representing about 90 percent of the state’s average monthly revenues, Schoeben explained.

The largest chunk of that — $593 million — is the state’s monthly contribution to its five public retirement systems that pay the pensions of state workers, teachers, university employees, judges and legislators.

Next largest is the state payroll, at $370 million a month, which pays the salaries of 63,000 state employees who keep the government operating.

The state sets aside an additional $270 million each month for distribution to elementary and high school districts through the school aid formula. Another $1.7 billion owed annually to these same school districts for specific purposes such as special ed and buses is treated as a lower priority for payment.

Illinois owes about $226 million a month in debt service, Schoeben wrote. This is the principal and interest owed to bondholders on state borrowings for a variety of purposes, including infrastructure projects.

The state gives core priority status to about $160 million in Medicaid payments and other state benefits covered by federal court consent decrees for specific programs, including care for persons with physical and mental disabilities.

Local governments receive anywhere from $60 million to $175 million in priority payments each month from the state. This is their share of the state’s income tax revenue.

Everyone else who provides some service or product to the state has to get in line for payment from the 10 percent of state revenue remaining.

I quit shopping retail for clothes due to very little selection in size. walmart used to carry my size then they quit. I can always find it on amazon. I do check other web sites but after one took my money and went out of business, I got named as one of the creditors. not a good experience. not to be repeated. yes medical is now taking up over 1/3 of our paycheck so we do have less to spend and when I spend it I am going to the best bang for the buck.

the proverbial “writing has been on the wall for Amazon” for years now

“Bezos earned in one year more than 8x the amount of net income that he has delivered to AMZN shareholders cumulatively over the 20-year operating history of the Company:

This is well beyond the bounds of obscenity. It’s criminal. The SEC allows Bezos to get away with semi-fraudulent accounting. It lets him get away with misrepresenting the Company’s “free cash flow” when it makes its quarterly “earnings” report to shareholders.”

AMZN buying hundreds of thousands of cars will command better price than dealers and conventional dealers will be wiped out. AMZN may but a single dealership for each brand it sells online, this would be very pro-consumer. They’ll probably be followed by Costco and Sams/Walmart, why not. Car dealerships are so 90s, 1890s!

Tesla tried going for direct sales to consumers on the Tesla cars but every attempt has been thwarted by the auto dealers associations in those States having the legislators enact laws to prevent direct sales. So Amazon will have a big battle with the car dealers if they try that just like Tesla has tried.

Not to worry. As soon as everybody gets their credit rating recalculated to reflect their hedonically adjusted credit worthiness, we should be off to the races.

Once all the 520 FICO scores suddenly turn into 720’s it will be (Amazon) Prime time for the US economy. What’s not to like about it ? A private sector answer to the social credit question! Who needs a Universal Basic Income when you can have a Universal Credit Score? Once installed, it becomes a floor to whatever degree of irresponsibility consumers engage in.

And to help underwrite the increased credit ratings, creditors will be able to lay claim to all your labor, every other child you have, and whichever internal organs some fat, old leech may feel the perceived need for. And the dimbulbs and dittoheads will be told in “school”, and will believe it to, that this is only “fair”, since they are not paying “their” debt and all…..

Many see such purchases as expanding the Amazon model. I am not so sure. Jeff Bezos is a smart guy. I see such purchases of whole foods as a diversification move. He is building a multidimensional empire. Media and brick and mortar are just blocks in this empire. How he uses these purchases may surprise people who cannot see ten years forward the way Bezos does.

I disagree. Amazon has many profitable divisions, whatever profits he makes goes into growth. He continually opens new enterprises that eat profits. Once he gets that division profitable, he moves on. Thus the whole grows as new arms develop eating cash. Just looking at their bottom line is deceiving.

I’ve been an Amazon prime customer for over a year a love it. I buy just about everything online and get it in 2 days, even small $5-10 items. It’s pretty rare we go out to a store these days, maybe food shopping only. Our neighbor does Pea Pod but my partner doesn’t think the extra cost (she thinks the food is five percent more) and the inability to look at produce isn’t worth the effort of signing up for Peapod. I wrote a letter to the CEO of WalMart asking them to compete against Amazon. I don’t think they are in the right place to compete yet, they are still fairly bricks and mortar store focused.

There are definitely some interesting times ahead given the recent trends and expected patterns. The thing that we keep seeing time and again with those that survive the “brick and slaughter” age is the focus on the customer experience. The store essentially becomes a marketing tool with many consumers exploring the brand and products in the store and then making their purchases online from the comfort of their own homes. Destination/ experience retail and vertically integrated retailers are the ones who are thriving in this current environment. The ones that are struggling and will continue to do so are those who are purely retailers and only control one piece of the supply chain.

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